Open Accesswebpic: A flexible web application for collecting distance and count measurements from images
Author(s) -
Lucy M. Chang
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0195184
Subject(s) - computer science , workflow , software , process (computing) , automation , crowds , web application , world wide web , data science , software engineering , database , operating system , mechanical engineering , computer security , engineering
Despite increasing ability to store and analyze large amounts of data for organismal and ecological studies, the process of collecting distance and count measurements from images has largely remained time consuming and error-prone, particularly for tasks for which automation is difficult or impossible. Improving the efficiency of these tasks, which allows for more high quality data to be collected in a shorter amount of time, is therefore a high priority. The open-source web application, webpic, implements common web languages and widely available libraries and productivity apps to streamline the process of collecting distance and count measurements from images. In this paper, I introduce the framework of webpic and demonstrate one readily available feature of this application, linear measurements, using fossil leaf specimens. This application fills the gap between workflows accomplishable by individuals through existing software and those accomplishable by large, unmoderated crowds. It demonstrates that flexible web languages can be used to streamline time-intensive research tasks without the use of specialized equipment or proprietary software and highlights the potential for web resources to facilitate data collection in research tasks and outreach activities with improved efficiency.